note
dragonchild
In addition to [xdg]'s excellent pointers, you might also want to look at [http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2005/04/14/cpan_guidelines.html|my article on the subject].
<p>As for what's needed in this specific area, the biggest thing lacking is tests. When I took over PDF::Template 4 years ago, there was no easy way of testing PDFs. One of the reasons I was so interested in converting PDF::Template to use PDF::Writer as its engine is that writing tests for PDF::Template become much simpler (see how I wrote tests for [cpan://Excel::Template] as a good example). In the meantime, [cpan://Test::PDF] has been released to CPAN and would make a very good way to test PDF::Template or PDF::Writer.
<p>The most immediate need is to get off of the PDFlib v3 API and either onto PDF::Writer (best solution) or the PDFlib v6 API (better than nothing). After that, there's a number of directions you can go.
<ul>
<li>Build in support for HTML-like tables. (The single-most requested feature).
<li>Move off of the XML templating format and to a TT-based format. (Fixes a bunch of design flaws and gets us out of the templating business and into the PDF-generation business)
<li>Make a bigger deal of the custom nodes feature.
<li>Add the ability to draw (second-most requested feature)
</ul>
<p>As you have low-level PDF experience, this sounds like it might be a good fit. I'll /msg you my email and we can chat further.
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My criteria for good software:
<ol>
<li>Does it work?
<li>Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?
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